SAP

It has been a while since I was updated on IBM SPSS Modeler and I got an update from IBM recently. IBM SPSS Modeler is, of course, IBM’s primary data mining and predictive analytics workbench. It uses a standard workflow metaphor, letting you string together nodes that process data, run algorithms, score data, etc. Both [...]

SAP has recently announcement some new predictive analytic offerings. At the core are in-database predictive analytics and R integration based on SAP HANA and a new predictive modeling tool, SAP Predictive Analysis. The latter is aimed to close the gap between “pure” data miners/modelers and the business analysts that might typically use tools like SAP [...]

SAP NetWeaver Decision Service Management is designed to externalize decision-making logic from application code while still supporting deployment to an ABAP environment. Decision Service Management is installed on a central design system. This single system can support multiple deployment/integration systems – as long as they are connected to the central design system the data in [...]

The webinar that Carsten Ziegler and I gave on Building Flexible, Easy to Change, and Rock-Solid Applications with BRFplus Decision Services is now available. ASUG members can view the recording here. SAP ABAP business applications can be rightly described as high performance, robust and rock-solid. Making them also flexible and easy to change is a challenge faced [...]

Carsten Zeigler and I are repeating our ASUG session on Building Flexible, Easy to change and Rock-Solid Applications with BRFplus Decision Services for the ASUG Webinar series at 9am Pacific on July 9. BRFplus is SAP’s business rules management system for ABAP. Learn how the empowerment of business experts is built into SAP applications See how [...]

I do a lot of work with companies and organizations adopting business rules and Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) such as BRFplus and NetWeaver BRM. I wanted to share two things (as I head off to Sapphire/ASUG). First, I often find that when organizations start with business rules they begin by just trying to capture [...]

Johan Gerber of MasterCard kicked things off on day 2. MasterCard does not actually issue the cards with their logo on, they are a technology company that provides a network to link consumers, 32,000,000 businesses and 22,000 card issuers. The network is very high performance, handling 100 pieces of information and processing each transaction in [...]

I am hosting a micro-forum at SAP’s Sapphire/ASUG event this year on “Smarter, Simpler Applications with Decision Service Management” with Carsten Ziegler, author of a great book on SAP’s rule engine BRFplus. This discussion focuses on decision service management (DSM) – a strategy that helps make business processes and systems more efficient and more agile. Learn how [...]

I am co-presenting at SAP’s Sapphire/ASUG event this year on “Building Flexible, Easy-to-Change and Rock-Solid Applications with BRFplus Decision Services” with Carsten Ziegler, author of a great book on SAP’s rule engine BRFplus. SAP ABAP business applications can be rightly described as high performance, robust and rock-solid. Making them also flexible and easy to change is [...]

Bill Gassman spoke on the role of Business Intelligence – BI – in process improvement. Bill means “big BI” – everything to do with intelligence about your business, the discipline of BI and analytics, not just a “BI” product. The road to intelligent operations he says has “haves” and “have nots” – some have BI [...]

A panel of customers (TXU Energy, Pfizer, NY State Dept Taxation and Finance – one of my favorite Decision Management stories and included in this white paper for instance) discussed how to link processes to performance management with Daryl Plummer of Gartner and the folks from ebizQ. No attempt to make a coherent story, just [...]

Running smarter is the key theme of the BI 4/EIM4 launch (though the online event is apparently not running at all, let alone running smarter). The launch of the two together – Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information Management –is deliberate on SAP’s part. Information is power and being able to discover, integrate, cleanse and use [...]

It’s been a while since a major release of BusinessObjects/SAP BI so 4.0 is a big deal – over a million person hours invested. SAP’s overall focus is to help companies “run smarter” and obviously the work on BI 4.0 has to be part of this overall environment – how do analytics help companies run [...]

Large companies rely on their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other enterprise applications to manufacture, distribute and manage the products their customers need. The behavior of these operational systems is critical to how a company treats, and is perceived by, its customers, its partners and its suppliers. Yet these systems are often plagued by manual [...]

My friend Carsten Ziegler, with Thomas Albrecht, has just released a new book on business rules for SAP customers – BRFplus — Business Rule Management for ABAP Applications. I was delighted to provide a foreword to this book as I think BRFplus is a terrific tool for SAP customers, giving them the power of business [...]

I was working on my chapter for the forthcoming SAP BPM book (Applying Real-World BPM in an SAP Environment) and it occurred to me that I rarely write about where to start with business rules. After all, most IT departments like to do a low-risk first application of a new technique. So where to start? [...]

Heard about an interesting job at SAP’s Palo Alto location today: The Global Business Incubator at SAP® is a global organization dedicated to developing innovative businesses targeted at meeting the needs of new market opportunities. Each of the initiatives is structured like a start-up company, consisting of a small team of individuals responsible for all [...]

Syndicated from ebizQ Sapphire, SAP’s big show, is on this week and I have been following the twitter stream (I was invited but couldn’t make it). Merv Adrian (@merv) had a sequence of posts about some SAP customers (Shell and Unilever) that really struck me: Shell … “Once you pour electronic concrete, it’s hard to [...]

There have been a number of twitter conversations around the recent SAP/Sybase news that make me want to write more than 140 characters in response. These fall into three main categories: Does the announcement have an impact on those considering decision management strategies What, exactly, do mobile workers need and does Sybase deliver this for [...]